


Hands On

by zakkazuki



Category: Saiyuki
Genre: Angst and Humor, Banri being a scumbag, Burial arc, M/M, content advisory: street harrassment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-03
Updated: 2014-06-03
Packaged: 2018-02-03 05:35:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,782
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1732991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zakkazuki/pseuds/zakkazuki
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Gojyo and Banri get white-girl wasted.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hands On

Gojyo knew he’d picked the wrong bar right from the start. The place was too empty, too many regulars, no one who looked like an easy mark. But he had enough cash for a beer, so he bought one, and he waited. That beer turned into another beer, and then a cute girl came in and sat near him at the bar, which turned into a drink for her. Then her boyfriend joined her not long after, which turned into another drink for Gojyo.

He made some money at the card table. Then he lost some money. Then he lost some more money, and yeah, he’d picked the wrong bar. The next bar was the wrong bar too, and so was the bar after that. Lady Luck was just not on his side tonight, and none of the other ladies he crossed paths with seemed interested in getting lucky either, so when he lost his last couple bucks to some asshole from out of town, Gojyo decided to call it a night—by sneaking out the back door before the bartender noticed he hadn’t paid off his tab.

It was a move that would bite him in the ass later and he knew it – he was certainly the only red-haired, red-eyed guy he’d ever met, so whoever the bartender sent to collect on his debt would have no trouble finding him – but that was a problem for tomorrow’s Gojyo to deal with. Maybe next week’s Gojyo, if he was lucky.

Deciding he’d put enough physical distance between himself and the bar and enough mental distance between himself and his losses, Gojyo stopped to light a cigarette. His last cigarette. Fuck. He took a long drag, breathed the smoke out slow. Might as well enjoy it.

He was about to get moving again when he heard the voice.

It was a male voice, hoarse, and almost a whisper. “Hey,” the voice said. “I know what you are.”

Gojyo froze mid-drag. “Hah?”

There was only one other person in the alley at this time of night, a youkai man who smelled like liquor and grime. The guy barely raised his voice, but even through the light haze of alcohol in his brain Gojyo heard every word.  “Yeah, you. Red hair, red eyes.” He took a ragged breath and continued, “Your mama liked her some youkai cock, huh?”

It was the alcohol that kept Gojyo from responding faster, so that all that came out of his mouth was a low, snarling “ _What_?!”

The guy looked him straight in the face now and Gojyo realized belatedly that the guy was holding his own youkai cock in his hand. “Whatdya think you taste like?” he breathed, and Gojyo tried not to see that hand moving. “Youkai or human?”

He heard his own angry roar and the crack of the guy’s skull against the brick wall before he fully realized that he’d thrown the punch. The guy sputtered, as if he were actually going to try to say something else, so Gojyo ground the heel of his boot into the guy’s groin before he could. Gojyo left him whimpering against the wall.

Why was everything such a pain in the ass?

 

The walk home was a blur, never any sights worth remembering even on sober nights, and Gojyo came to himself again when he went to grab the door knob. It was unlocked. Wasn’t supposed to be unlocked.

Gojyo’s left hand abandoned its automatic search of his pocket for the key and his right turned the knob. There were a couple of possible scenarios that would lead to his door being unlocked but the most likely was – “Banri? The fuck, pick someone else’s lock, you asshole.”

Without getting up from where he sat, feet propped up on Gojyo’s kitchen table, Banri flipped him the bird. “Get off my back. I brought beer.” He gestured to the fridge. There were a few bottles scattered on the table and within arms’ reach on the floor already.

Gojyo went straight for the fridge without even taking off his coat. He grabbed one of the glass bottles and narrowed his eyes at the label. “Never head of this shit.”

“That’s cause it’s _not_ shit, my man. We’re movin’ up in the world.”

Gojyo pried off the bottle cap using the edge of the scarred countertop and the heel of his hand.  The physicality of the gesture helped him release some of the anger still reverberating around inside his skull. “You pull some bigass job or something?” He put the cool bottle to his lips and took a long, deep swallow. “Not bad.”

“Told ya.” Banri took a swig of his own beer, and after savoring the taste for a moment, raised his bottle as if to toast. “This gig pays the big bucks. I tell ya, it’s right up your alley. I’ll get you in, that’ll double our money. Then no more of that piss in a bottle we used to call beer.” Banri gesticulated with his cigarette to punctuate his sentences. “Hell, screw beer. Fucking gold-encrusted top shelf whiskey, or whatever you want – it’s all ours.”

“You’re wasted,” Gojyo decided.

“So I had a few drinks before I got here,” Banri smiled his crooked yet charming smile. “And I got bored waiting for you.” He gestured at the bottles on the floor. “So sue me.”

“Today was shit,” Gojyo finished off his beer. “Couldn’t you get something stronger?”

“You have no sense for the finer things in life,” Banri told him.

“Fuck off.” Gojyo reached into his coat pocket and then remembered he’d smoked his last cigarette on the way home. “Gimme a smoke. I’m out.”

“Screw you, buy your own.” Banri took an extra-long drag of his cigarette and breathed the smoke out in Gojyo’s face, just to be an ass. “Unless you lost all your money again?”

“When I said my night was shit I meant my night was shit. Use that fuckin’ great-ass gig of yours to pay my bar tab, asshole.”

Banri gave Gojyo a look of mock pity and shook another cigarette out of his pack. “It’s your lucky day, ol’ Banri’s feelin’ generous.” Gojyo fumbled for his own lighter but Banri got to his first and lit Gojyo’s cigarette for him. “Not generous enough to pay your bar tab, though, dumbass. Help me out with this job and you can pay that tab twice over.”

“Just tryin’ to pay it once,” Gojyo muttered, rummaging in the kitchen cupboards for something else to drink. “What the hell is this job anyway?”

“It’s just like babysitting,” Banri told him, using his beer bottle in one hand and cigarette in the other to paint a picture. “You pick up the girls at point A,” he moved the cigarette toward the beer bottle, “drop ‘em off at point B. Babysitting. With benefits.” He smiled that crooked, toothy grin again.

Gojyo poured a splash of cheap rum from a dusty bottle into a spotty rocks glass. He’d found both of them under the sink somewhere. “I told you, Ban’, I don't’ go in for that kind of shit.”

“Benefits, G,” Banri’s grin got even wider and more crooked. “All-you-can-eat pussy. I know how much you _looove_ to eat pussy.”

Gojyo took a swig of his rum to cover up his discomfort and responded to Banri’s taunt with a smirk of his own. “If ya had a face like mine, you wouldn’t have to pay to get a girl to sleep with you.”

Banri let out an unpleasant bark of a laugh and Gojyo took another swig of his drink. “Nobody said anything about _paying_ , G.”

“You wouldn’t have to fuckin’ _steal_ it either,” Gojyo muttered, looking away, taking another drink.

“It’s not like they’re youkai like us, man. You care about a bunch of human bitches?”

“I’m, uh, fifty-percent human bitch, Ban’.” Gojyo was too drunk to stop the words from coming out. He finished his drink. His face felt too hot. He didn’t think the alcohol was the only reason.

“Hey, uh, G, man, I’m—“ Banri disentangled himself from the kitchen table and chair, waving his hands in what was probably supposed to be a pacifying gesture. “You know, it’s just that I don’t see you like that – I’m wasted, remember? Lemme pour you another drink.” As he shifted awkwardly from foot to foot in front of Gojyo, his smile turned from warped and unpleasant to friendly and eager-to-please. When Gojyo set his glass down on the counter, Banri filled it to the brim. “You got another glass, man?”

Gojyo handed him a mug out of the dish drainer by the sink and, pointing to the chipped rim, said “Don’t cut your face off.”

“Thank youuuu,” Banri sang out annoyingly as he poured rum into the mug.

Gojyo stared at his over-full glass. No way was he going to be able to pick that up without spilling it all over the kitchen. He bent over just enough to sip from the top of the glass without disturbing its delicate balance. Even just an hour ago the rum would have stung his gums and lips, but now his mouth just felt numb.

“Ya got rum in your hair,” Banri told him.

Gojyo glared up at him, strand of hair still dripping into his glass.

“Your hair’s all red n’ rummy,” Banri repeated.

“Shut up about my hair.”

Banri sipped his mug-rum. “Don’t know why you keep it around if no one can talk about it.” He ran a hand through his own close-cropped locks. “Man, buzzin’ my hair was the best decision I ever made, lemme tell—”

“People do talk about it,” Gojyo grumbled, holding his glass now that he had drunk enough to pick it up. “They say fuckin’ things about it, can’t keep their mouths shut when they figure out what it means.” Gojyo couldn’t stop talking once he’d started. Why was he _talking_? More rum was the only solution.

“Ugh, someone say something again?” Gojyo could tell that Banri was only pretending to be interested, but his drunk mouth was too busy talking to care.

“The usual shit.”

“’Bout your mom? Your human one?”

Gojyo nodded. Another sip of his drink. It was a small mercy that this time Banri remembered not to say “Your real mom.”

“Fuckin’ people, huh.” Banri said, sounding bitter, and lit another cigarette.

“And get this,” Gojyo continued. “Then the asshole asked me if I tasted like a youkai or a human. That was a fuckin’ new one. Shit.” He drained the rest of his rum, and it should have burned, that much alcohol down his throat like that, but he didn’t feel a thing. “I gotta take a piss.”

He felt the room whooshing past on either side of his head as he made his way to the bathroom. _Damn_ , he was wasted. It took a few moments of standing in front of the toilet for the whooshing room to catch up with itself. When he felt steady enough, he unzipped and went about his business. Just as he was zipping up and about to be super pleased with himself for being piss-drunk but not so drunk he couldn’t piss where he was supposed to, he heard a voice somewhere around his shoulder.

Banri was leaning against the door frame and staring at Gojyo, Gojyo with his pants half-zipped and his belt open and Banri’s face was all red and he was grinning all wide and toothy.

“Ban’, what the fuck?”

Banri drew some kind of loose shape in the air with his cigarette. “That thing you said--”

Gojyo gestured at the toilet. “Ban’, I’m almost fuckin’ done.”

Banri shifted his weight, still leaning on the door frame for support but largely blocking the way out. “No, that thing the guy said, it’s like a riddle, G.”

“Man, seriously--”

Banri got closer, still between Gojyo and the bathroom door, and started reaching a hand out to Gojyo’s face. “Don’t you wanna know the answer, G? Cuz I do.”

A trickle of ash hit Gojyo’s neck. The reaching hand was the hand with the cigarette. “Ow, Banri, cig, cig!”

Banri pulled his hand back, looking at it like he didn’t remember that it belonged to him. He smiled sheepishly. “Forgot I was still holding that.” He flicked it into the toilet. Gojyo couldn’t remember if he’d flushed the toilet.

With no more cigarette to distract him, Banri returned his hand to Gojyo’s face. “Don’t you want to know the answer?” he repeated, like he had the best idea in the world.

Gojyo didn’t know why he wasn’t pushing Banri’s hand away. It felt kind of nice, keeping his face anchored, as if his face might spin off into space with the rest of the bathroom if Banri let go. “The fuck’s the question, Ban’?”

Banri got very close to his ear. “Do you taste like a youkai or a human?”

Gojyo couldn’t help the full-body shiver that automatically went along with someone breathing that close into his ear. “Like some perv like you gets to find out,” he breathed back.

“Who does get to find out?” Banri asked his ear. “Some human chicks at the bar? Whadda they know?” He almost sounded like he was pouting. Pouting into Gojyo’s ear, resting the weight of his head against the side of Gojyo’s head.

“I’m not telling.” Gojyo didn’t really know what they were talking about anymore.

“You don't know,” Banri accused. “Let me figure it out.”

“What don’t I know—” Gojyo started to say, but he was interrupted by Banri covering Gojyo’s mouth with his own.

Banri’s hand wrapped around the back of Gojyo’s head to grab a handful of his hair and force their faces closer together, and Gojyo felt like his only choices were lean into Banri or overbalance. Banri was the only thing in the room that wasn’t spinning so Gojyo grabbed the front of his shirt and held on like his life depended on it.

Banri made some sort of noise into Gojyo’s mouth when Gojyo’s hands hit his chest. He slipped his tongue into Gojyo’s mouth, which had still been basically hanging open anyway, and some weird instinct of Gojyo’s made him respond automatically to accommodate Banri. The conscious part of his brain was occupied with how the damn bathroom wouldn’t keep still and how his eyes couldn’t focus on Banri this close, so it was a good few seconds before Gojyo realized that Banri was kissing him, that the hand that wasn’t pulling his hair was now under his shirt, that Gojyo’s own hands had crept from Banri’s shirt to his shoulders, and that apparently he was kissing Banri back.

“Guess not even you can resist Sha Gojyo’s charms,” Gojyo said, waggling his eyebrows suggestively, when Banri came up for air. Their faces were still only centimeters apart. Banri’s breath reeked. Gojyo’s probably did too.

“Charm’s got nothing to do with it,” Banri told him.

“Yeeeeah?” Gojyo rested his forehead against Banri’s, liking the way his hair swish-swished around their faces when he moved. “What’s it got to do with, then?”

“Wanna figure out what you taste like.”

“Oh? Likin’ me so far?” Gojyo’s brain circuits were firing haphazardly, and he distracted himself before Banri could respond. “Heeeey, ya really do have eyebrows – I can see ‘em now.” Still leaning his forehead against Banri’s, Gojyo’s brow wrinkled as he peered at Banri’s eyebrows. “The hell happened to them, why’re they like that.”

“Why do you care, you got some kinda eyebrow fetish too?”

“Wait, hey, what’dya mean, ‘too’? Whatdyou know?!”

“Why don'tya take your shirt off.”

“Love to, baby, but if I move my hands I’ll fall.”

“Who’re you callin’ baby? Just get your shirt off. You’re not gonn’ fall.”

“Right, right, here we go.” Gojyo forgot for an instant about the spinny, spinny room and took both hands off of Banri’s shoulders. He reached for the hem of his shirt and Banri moved his own hands to help Gojyo undress faster. Gojyo wobbled on his feet a bit as he pulled the shirt over his head, and Banri caught him, holding him upright with two strong hands on his lower back.

As soon as Gojyo’s shirt was flung out of the way somewhere, Banri buried his face in Gojyo’s collarbone, tracing the outline with his tongue, giving special attention to the little concave space at the base of his throat.

Gojyo was feeling everything as if through a thin layer of gauze – nothing Banri was doing was really registering fully with his nervous system but he moaned a little anyway as Banri’s t-shirt pressed against his bare skin. “You like that, huh?” he asked Banri. “Izzat good?” He started running his hands up and down Banri’s back.

Banri made a sound in his throat and scraped his teeth along Gojyo’s breastbone.

And then, for a brief moment, they were falling through the air. Gojyo let out an unmanly yelp as Banri overbalanced them or tripped or something. Gojyo heard the jingle of his belt buckle, still hanging open, as something hard hit him in the shoulders and the back of his knees. The bathtub. He was sprawled on his back in the bathtub with his long, long legs hanging over the side, going on forever… and Banri was between his knees and on top of him.

Taking the change of position in stride, Gojyo took his hands off of Banri’s back and started to shove his own pants down, since that’s generally what you did when things got horizontal.

Banri started grabbing at Gojyo’s arms and Gojyo reflexively tried to slap him away. “Hey, Gojyo, hey, what’re you doin’, keep your pants on, man, _seriously_!”

“Pants or no pants, I’ll make ya feel real good,” Gojyo slurred, giving up on his waistband and reaching for Banri’s fly instead, but Banri stopped him before he got there and managed to hold Gojyo’s arms still.

“’Kay, ‘kay, look, no hands,” Gojyo mumbled, turning his hands palm up in a placating gesture far away from Banri’s groin. “Still got my mouth though.” He grinned eagerly up at Banri, waiting for permission.

Banri took one look at what Gojyo thought were irresistible bedroom eyes and snort-laughed.

“Heyyy, don’t _laugh_ , this is why you don’t get laid, man,” Gojyo protested.

“That face!” Banri sniggered. “Anybody’d laugh!”

“The hell’s funny ‘bout my _face_?!” Gojyo tried to push himself up out of the bathtub and get in Banri’s face, and he managed, more or less. In that he ran into Banri’s nose.

Banri took advantage of gravity and his position on top of Gojyo to pin Gojyo  back down. “Ya look so freakin’ desperate, kinda makes me feel bad.”

“Whatcha got ta feel bad about?” Gojyo was confused. “Don’t wanna make nobody feel bad.” He tried to reach for Banri’s crotch again.

Banri stopped him with a firm grip on his wrist. “Makes me feel bad I’m not into dudes.”

Banri was pinning Gojyo’s wrist to the scummy porcelain of the bathtub but their faces were still too close, noses touching, and Gojyo couldn’t see straight so he couldn’t tell if Banri was staring into his eyes or what but everything kind of froze for a moment. And when the moment unfroze their mouths were touching again and Gojyo honestly couldn’t say who it was, he or Banri, who had made the move that turned their staring contest into another kiss. And another kiss, and another. And Gojyo wasn’t really sure where he was anymore. He was vaguely aware of his mouth and the rest of his body moving, responding to whatever it was Banri was doing on top of him, hell, he was _fucked up_ , he didn’t care, just roll with it.

His body felt like lead anyway so he got comfortable, settled what little of his body would fit into the narrow space in the bathtub, let Banri press up against him and bite and lick and suck at his neck and chest.

“Ya trying to like, tenderize me or somethin’?” Gojyo mumbled, and laughed to himself a little bit because that was stupid, it wasn’t like he was a piece of meat or something. He thought maybe Banri laughed too, but he couldn’t be sure, not really, not really sure of anything as the gray gauzy fog in and around his brain settled into a thick, inky black.

 

Gojyo awoke to an aching back and the granddaddy of all hangovers.

He slowly cracked his eyes open, only to be met with an onslaught of severe overhead lighting. Squeezing his eyes shut, he tried to roll over onto his side, but his knees bumped into something solid. He tried to stretch out his upper body but his shoulders and neck were constrained by another solid object. _What the –_ “urghh,” Gojyo groaned as he forced his eyes open again, hands groping around him to try to get purchase.

Wherever he was, the surfaces surrounding him were slippery and hard and very, very bright. He squinted against the invading force of white that was assaulting his eyes. Fuck, his head hurt. He managed to sit himself upright and force his eyes open and realized he was in a bathtub. Judging from the layer of grime (the tile wasn’t white after all, it had just looked white with the fucking light on the ceiling glaring off of it), the familiar color of the walls and the floor, and the strands of red hair clinging around the drain, this was his bathroom. He was at home, and somehow he’d passed out with his upper body wedged in the bathtub and his legs hanging over the side. Explained why his neck and shoulders hurt so bad. _Fuck_.

He wasn’t wearing a shirt. That wasn’t weird in and of itself but his belt was unbuckled and his pants were kind-of sliding off his hips. That also wasn’t totally unheard of but combined with the waking up alone in the fucking bathtub thing, it raised some questions about what he’d been doing before he passed out. He vaguely remembered going to take a piss, which would get him to the bathroom, but the tub remained unexplained. Propping himself up on shaky arms and legs, he tried to lever himself out of the tub and felt a wave of nausea crash over him. The pounding in his head picked up tempo. He sank to his knees in front of the toilet.

He could feel the nausea clawing its way up his throat. “Urgh,” he managed, as he pulled himself up over the toilet bowl. There was a cigarette butt floating in the water, how did that get there, and he stared at it, trying to get his bearings. He coughed experimentally a few times, but no vomiting seemed ready to relieve his nausea. “Fuuuuck,” he said, out loud this time, leaning his head against the cool toilet bowl.

He couldn’t be sure how long he stayed there, using the toilet as a pillow, but the worst of the nausea passed without incident, and he finally decided to stand up. The sharp pang in his head as he got to his feet was almost enough to send him curling back into a heap next to the toilet, but Gojyo was nothing if not stubborn, and there was only so long he could spend lying beside his toilet before he started to feel like his masculinity was on the line.

With the determination of a man with something to prove, Gojyo repositioned and re-buckled his pants and stumbled to the kitchen.

This determination buoyed him as far as the coffee maker, where he shoveled a few scoops of grounds out of the tub and into a filter and poured water all over the countertop but managed to get enough of it into the reservoir at the back of the coffee maker and get the pot back into position and punch the start button.

Gojyo stared into the fridge. There wasn’t much in there, and even though barfing wasn’t an option right now, eating didn’t seem like a good choice either. Microwaveable frozen dinners, out. But Gojyo knew from a long personal history of heavy drinking that attempting some form of caloric intake was probably advisable. Toast. He found the dilapidated bag of bread sitting on the counter and unwound the twisty-tie. And was greeted by two slices of white bread studded with greenish-blue mold.

Taking in the unfortunate fate of his last two slices of bread, Gojyo felt the icy shudder of nausea again and quickly shut the bag, pitching it into the trash can. “Come on, _seriously_?” he whined, to no one in particular. Now he knew he never wanted to eat anything again. Never ever ever.

His stomach lurched. He clamped both hands over his mouth and booked it back to the toilet.

 

When Gojyo returned to the kitchen, newly discovered bottle of aspirin in hand, the coffee was done _. Thank the fucking lord_. In lieu of bread, he found a box of crackers in the pantry. They tasted like lightly-salted cardboard, but when it came to forming a buffer between his poor abused stomach lining, the aspirin, and the coffee, well, they’d work well enough.

Gojyo pushed aside some of the discarded bottles on the kitchen table, trying not to gag at the smell of liquor. Had he and Banri really drunk this much by themselves, or had the bottles multiplied overnight somehow? After clearing himself a space, he sank into a chair with his crackers, coffee, and a glass of water to take the aspirin with.

No longer preoccupied with dragging his aching body from place to place, Gojyo had more brain-space to reflect on the previous night’s events. And that’s when he saw Banri.

It wasn’t that he was surprised to see Banri passed out in a heap on his living room floor. Even though he’d never chipped in so much as a dime of rent, Banri crashed here more often than not, usually inviting himself in unannounced. Gojyo was terrible at laying down ground rules, so when Banri found the door locked he just picked the battered old lock and let himself in. That was what had happened last night, Gojyo remembered. He’d come home, already drunk, to Banri, already drunk, and then because Gojyo was pissed off at what that asshole in that back alley had said to him on the way home, they’d gotten drunker.

Gojyo’s body went cold as he remembered. Fuck, after all that effort, he still remembered something like _that._ He glared into his coffee cup. Why did he forget good things, like pretty girls’ names or which bar it was that had that great happy hour special, but bad things stuck in his brain no matter how hard he tried to get rid of them?

_It’s ‘cause you don’t want to forget them, do you? You still remember every single time she hit you, every single word –_

Gojyo forced himself to take another drink of coffee, telling himself it would clear his head. He wanted a smoke. Why the hell did he have to go and bet on that last hand? He’d known there was no way he could win, and he would have left with at least enough money for a pack of cigarettes if he’d just known when to quit. But he’d been in the mood for making stupid-ass choices, like going straight home to get blackout with Banri. What had happened after he’d gone to the bathroom, how did he get in the freaking bathtub? One thing was for sure, it was time for Banri to go home. Home to wherever the hell he crashed when he wasn’t at Gojyo’s.

Gojyo felt a pang of guilt – part of him suspected Banri didn’t have any particular place to go when he wasn't with Gojyo. But fuck that, Banri bragged about how he hated being tied down by social obligations like leases, he liked to be footloose and fancy-free or whatever. And in the first place, Gojyo wouldn’t be this fucking hungover if Banri hadn’t filled that whole fucking glass with rum, this was his fault. He needed to go.

Gojyo dragged himself out of his chair, coffee cup in tow, and crouched down next to where Banri had passed out. “Oi. Banri.”

Banri made a grumbling noise but didn’t look like he was waking up.

Something about Banri’s half-open mouth and his chest rising and falling under his t-shirt caught Gojyo’s attention, and a jumble of memories came piling into his brain. His hands grabbing for the front of Banri’s shirt, Banri pressing his body against his, Banri’s mouth on his mouth, on his neck…

_The hell, Sha Gojyo, why would you try to get with_ Banri _?_

His stomach lurched again, this time in disgust instead of nausea, as he remembered Banri falling on top of him, knocking him into the bathtub. _You practically begged to suck his fucking cock. Just because he was there._

He remembered the first words Banri had ever said to him, after watching him take down three guys who were each easily twice his size.

_“Hey, how much for you?”_

He’d been ready to punch out Banri right then, because it wasn’t the first time someone had tried to proposition him. He’d been reduced to a sex act in one way or another since birth anyway, whether it was the taboo union that made him, or Mom throwing herself at Jien because she couldn’t bear to look at him, or, later, all of the tricks he’d learned to get women to come to bed with him, so at least for a night he could feel like he was wanted…

_“No, stupid, not like that. How much I gotta pay you to team up with me?”_

 

Gojyo wasn’t used to being treated like a _person_ , much less an asset to a team.

Now, he wasn’t sure what he was more afraid of, that Banri would look at him differently, or that he wouldn’t look at him at all.

Maybe Banri would forget the whole thing.

Maybe he was being a fucking pussy. He put a hand on Banri’s shoulder and shook him roughly. “Banri. Hey. Wake the fuck up.”

Banri’s eyes snapped open. “Mrgh?” He rolled over so he was lying on his back, staring blearily up at Gojyo. “What’s your problem?”

Gojyo glared back. “Time to go home.”

Banri groaned and put a hand over his eyes. “Have some freakin’ mercy, my head hurts…”

“Whose fault is that, you think?” Gojyo was in no mood for sympathy.

“Whose fault do you think it is? Fuckin’… ugh. You’re sure in a hurry to get me gone, compared with last night.”

There it was. Gojyo was anticipating it, steeling himself against it, but it still blindsided him. “ _What_?” His heart pounded in his ears.

“You were _all over_ me last night, G,” Banri propped himself up so that he could look Gojyo straight in the eye. “Couldn’t keep your hands off of me. And when I tried to hold you back, you were like, ‘but hey, I still got my _mouth_.’” Banri sneered.

“I said that?” Gojyo tried to play it off like it was funny, in an “oh gee whaddya know” sort of way, but he was pretty sure he did remember saying that, and his laugh sounded forced.

“You bet you did. You got somethin’ you forgot to tell me? Cuz _chicks_ don’t get so excited to suck me off.”

There was a witty comeback waiting there but he felt too damn shitty and uncomfortable to go for it. “What, uh, what d’you think you should, uh, know?”

Banri picked himself up off the floor. “Like should I watch my ass when I’m over here, man? What the fuck?”

“What? No!” Gojyo stood up to meet Banri’s height. “I was fuckin’ drunk, Banri. I don’t actually—”

“You seemed pretty ‘actually’—”

“You _pinned me to the bathtub._ ”

“I _tripped_. You offer to blow anybody who knocks you into a piece of furniture?” Banri sneered.

“So what if I fuckin’ did? Would it matter? I was _plastered_.”

“So do you? You’re into freakier stuff ‘n I thought, G.”

“Will you quit sayin’ that?!” Gojyo snapped. “Shut up about shit you don’t know.”

“Shit I don’t know? You shoulda seen your fuckin’ face, man.”

“What about my face?!” Gojyo’s hands balled into fists.

Banri looked Gojyo straight in the eye. “It’s disturbing.”

“Hah?!”

“I had to hold you down so you wouldn’t put your hands down my pants,” Banri’s voice was filled with contempt. “And the way you looked at me, all _disappointed_ \- It was fucking creepy.”

_“Just wanna make you feel good,”_   Gojyo’s own slurred voice reverberated in his memory. _Only able to do one thing people like anyway._ He could only imagine what his face had looked like as Banri swatted away his grasping hands and held him down so that he couldn’t move. It didn’t bear imagining.

He should be punching Banri, Banri definitely deserved it, but instead he wanted to be sick again.

When Gojyo thought about it, it was sort of inevitable that he’d screw things up between him and Banri like this. It wasn’t that he had the hots for Banri or anything like that – that’d be a straightforward enough situation. No, usually Banri didn’t register as more than a light blip on Gojyo’s admittedly far-reaching lust radar, but Gojyo continued to hang around him anyway. And Banri continued to hang around Gojyo, and include Gojyo in his schemes, and they fought and stole and raised hell together and even shared the profit. Like equals. Or mostly equals.

Usually Gojyo had two modes: fight or fuck, but Banri fell somewhere in between. He shouldn’t have been surprised that his drunk brain would get those modes confused.

 

The bottles on the table clattered as Banri freed one that still had liquor in it from the pile and drained the contents. Gojyo listened to the click and flare of Banri’s lighter as he lit a Hi-Lite, and his fists involuntarily loosened as his fingers grasped for their own imaginary cigarette. If he could just get some nicotine, he could think that much clearer, if he could get his head to stop throbbing…

“So,” Banri said, as if he was coming to terms with the idea, “This you wanting to do me thing, that’s new…”

“Yeah right!” Gojyo snapped back. “I was too drunk to know what I was lookin’ at, and so were you. You’re just seein’ what you want to see ‘cause your big ego needs stroking.”

Banri leered at Gojyo and Gojyo immediately regretted his choice of words. _“Ooh, Gojyo_ ,” Banri’s voice jumped into a higher register as he did a bad imitation of a woman’s voice. “ _You still got your mouth_?” He dropped back down to his normal voice again to add“Maybe you can use it to stroke my _big_ _ego_.”

Gojyo growled as his hands clenched into fists again. “If you think I’m just gonna stand here and take that—” He was grabbing Banri by the collar and hauling him closer before he even realized it.

“Take it, _take it_ , Gojyo’s gonna take it!” Banri sang, disproportionately amused by his own joke and not at all phased by Gojyo’s fist hovering a few inches from his nose.

“ _That’s it!_ ” Gojyo threw the punch, but Banri blocked it and freed his shirt collar from Gojyo’s grasp, redirecting Gojyo’s momentum towards the wall. Gojyo stumbled over a discarded beer bottle and rounded on Banri again.

His fist was about to connect with Banri’s jaw and his mouth was still screaming the battle cry of the righteous when there was a knock on the door.

Gojyo froze.

Banri’s weird little eyebrows narrowed.

 

_Knock knock_

_Knock-knock-knock_

 

“Who the hell is it?!” Banri demanded, at the same time as Gojyo said

“You kicking the door?!”

 

“Sha Gojyo?” A gruff male voice rang out from the other side of the door. “You got nowhere to run, ya hear!?” _Wham_. The door shook as whoever was out there gave it another solid kick.

“Tch.” Gojyo lowered his fist. “I’m coming, quit kicking the fucking door!”

Banri slunk back away from the door, fishing his pack of Hi-Lites out of his pocket.

Gojyo’s nostrils flared at the smell of nicotine as Banri lit up. “Yeah fuck you too,” he grumbled as he unlocked the door. Then, to his unwelcome guests, “Look, if you’re sellin’ something, I’m not buying.”

“You know why we’re here! Get out here!”

The three burly men at his front door certainly didn’t look like door-to-door salesmen, and they didn’t seem to think his joke was funny.

“Actually I don’t recognize you guys,” Gojyo told them. “And I’m really fucking hungover right now, so how about coming back tomorrow?”

“Don’t play dumb! You’re not gonna talk yourself outta this one!”

“You think you can just drink for free, huh, bigshot?”

“Mr. Yan sent us. Pay up or we’ll _make_ you pay!”

Gojyo leaned against the doorway. He gave the three thugs his best _Are you fucking kidding me?_ stare. “Who?”

“Shit, you really are dense. Yan’s Tavern. You mean to say you forgot that's where you were drinkin’ last night?”

“Yan’s?” Gojyo sighed. _The place I walked out of_.“I bought like four drinks. Can’t he wait?”

“Mr. Yan has a business to run. He can’t just turn a blind eye to people who don’t pay.”

“Well, go back and tell Mr. Yan that I don’t got the money.”

“Mr. Yan’s not gonna take no for an answer!”

“Give us the money and this doesn’t have to get ugly.”

“Too late,” Gojyo told them. He slammed his fist into Thug #1’s face, putting the force of all of his anger at Banri and himself into the punch. Blood spurted from Thug #1’s nose and splattered across Gojyo’s knuckles. “It’s already ugly!”

 

Gojyo’s hangover fueled his rage, increasing the intensity of his blows.  The three thugs put up a good fight, but they were only human.

As he stood over their unconscious bodies, breathing hard and looking down at the bloody pulp he’d turned their faces into, Gojyo was suddenly reminded of when he’d first met Banri. He looked over his shoulder, half expecting Banri to be there behind him, smirking, but of course he was nowhere to be found. Gojyo didn’t need to look further to know that Banri was long gone, had probably left the moment Gojyo and the three thugs started trading punches.

Fighting his own battles was enough of a pain in the ass. He couldn’t blame Banri for not wanting to stick around and lend a hand. Gojyo had always found living to be a pain in the ass – he couldn’t really understand how Banri managed it with such ease.

_Just empty out my head._

Gojyo remembered when he used to think like that.

_Why can’t anyone just hit me hard enough?_

He’d wished he was dead so many times, but he still fought tooth and nail when his life was at stake, because his upbringing had hardwired survival instincts deep into his brain, so deep that he couldn’t switch them off.

Weird, he hadn’t really thought like that since he met Banri.

Well, Banri could do whatever the hell he wanted. He could slink off and come back next week or next month or next year, whenever he damn well pleased, and Gojyo would still have his stupid bar tab to pay.

He crouched down next to Thug #3 and started searching his pockets. He found a wallet containing a surprisingly hefty wad of cash, which he promptly liberated from its owner. _So there, Banri, see what you’re missing?_ he thought, rifling through the stack of bills. _No 60-40 split, no finders fee, just me and a big stack of cash._

In Thug #2’s coat pocket he found something else he’d been longing for. It was a pack of cigarettes. Shitty cheap menthol cigarettes, but nicotine was nicotine. He kicked at the unconscious thug’s arm. “You smoke some girly-ass cigarettes, you pussy,” he said, but he was already lighting one and bringing it to his lips and he had to laugh at the hypocrisy of it all.

 His head still ached dully, but the aspirin was starting to kick in, and the nicotine took the edge off.

That was all Gojyo expected out of life anyway. Something to take the edge off.

He lit up another shitty stolen menthol cigarette and took a long, slow drag.


End file.
